Amazonia for February 25, 2019
February 25, 2019
Several yellow flags flapped in the wind last week. In two conversations with conference organizers focused on the law enforcement and intelligence markets, I learned there was little interest in Amazon’s policeware services. I found this interesting but understandable. Amazon’s “footprint” is much larger in the eCommerce mindspace and recent news has been dominated by Amazon’s response to some New Yorkers’ protests over tax breaks for a cash rich, profitable company. Another factor is the ongoing background buzz about the suddenly personal life of Amazon’s founder. Nevertheless, DarkCyber Annex believes that Amazon is likely to be a disruptive force in what we call policeware and intelware. A few highlights from last week’s Amazon team:
Do Not Fear Amazon
“We’re from Amazon. We’re here to help you.” Jeff Bezos appears to be spending some cycle time promulgating these messages to employees. CNBC reported that “Jeff Bezos told employees that fear of Amazon is overblown.” According the CNBC:
Fears of Amazon taking over the world have reached a fever pitch in recent years. In the fourth quarter of 2017, Amazon was the most mentioned company on earnings calls of S&P 500 companies. But some of Amazon’s primary competitors are finding ways to survive and even thrive against one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Evidence is the positive financial performance of Wal-Mart and the number of misfires Amazon video has delivered. Also, Microsoft is catching up with Amazon cloud services. Rest easy.
Amazon Expands Its Threat Detection
There are many specialist companies — many of which will be acquired or just go out of business. Amazon is aware of this market. One possible reason is that many threat detection firms use Amazon’s infrastructure to provide their for fee services. It seems logical that Amazon would compete in this sector. InfoQ reported that Amazon had added three new threat detection services to its cyber security offerings. Amazon brands this initiative as GuardDuty. Infoq explains the service this way:
Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service available on AWS that continuously monitors for malicious or unauthorized behavior to help customers protect their AWS accounts and workloads. When a threat is detected, the service will send a detailed security alert to the GuardDuty console and AWS CloudWatch Events – thus making alerts actionable and easy to integrate into existing event management and workflow systems.
Amazon’s spin is that its existing customers can use these services. However, scope creep is likely to occur. Amazon may compete with some of its customers as it expands its revenue streams in this lucrative market.
Graphus Becomes AWS Partner
It’s difficult to keep track of the companies racing to become AWS partners. We noted that Virtual Strategy reported that Graphus is on the Bezos team. Graphus is a cyber security firm.
Ethereum Service Enhancement
Many individuals in government are not aware that Amazon is a player in the burgeoning digital currency game. Amazon is a player and an increasingly important one. Ethereum World News reported that Amazon supports deployment of VeChain Thor (VET) DApps with almost one click simplicity. What does this digital currency jargon mean? One one hand, an Amazon customer can deploy his or her own blockchain application without having to do bare metal coding. In terms of law enforcement, the expanding Ethereum services signal that data flowing into the through the Amazon system may well be of significance when it comes to identifying certain interesting behaviors. This development complements a managed blockchain service and a quantum ledger database.
Amazon Subsidies
A surprising subsidy from Smartronix reduces the cost of AWS cloud migrations has been reported by Globe Newswire. The idea is to reduce the cost of AWS migration for Virtual Machines (VM) running on VMware. For projects with a minimum of 500 VMs, the migration will be free (completely funded), with partial subsidies offered for smaller projects. In short, this is a play to get big installations. The idea is that organizations will be able to use the same tools and management capabilities they are using today, including VMware provisioning, storage, and lifecycle policies.
Amazon Snow Globe for Elastic Cloud Services
It is now possible to run an application within Amazon. The innovation is described in “Setting Up PrivateLink for Amazon ECS and Amazon ECR.” The idea is that “all the network traffic within the AWS network. When you create AWS PrivateLink endpoints for ECR and ECS, these service endpoints appear as elastic network interfaces with a private IP address in your VPC.” The idea is a variation on the catchphrase “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. The Amazon edit becomes “What happens in AWS stays within AWS.”
Amazon Funds Computer Science Programs
Free training? Sounds like a promising offer. PC Magazine reports that Amazon will fund computing courses for under privileged teens. The online news service said:
More than 1,000 high schools across the US through its Future Engineer program [will receive funding]. Of those schools, more than 700 are classified as Title 1, meaning a high percentage of their students come from low-income families.
But anyone can become an Amazonia for Just head to Geek Deals and pay $35 for the AWS Certified Architect Developer Bundle 2019, now discounted by over 90 percent.
Amazonia, February 18, 2019
February 18, 2019
Amazon’s Bezos bulldozer may have driven out of Queens last week. The high profile HQ2 could be on the move. How’s Newark look? Mr. Bezos may be in chess mode, sacrificing one location in order to pull off another Bezos bulldozer maneuver. Other Amazonia which caught our attention is summarized below:
A Mid Life Crisis Moment?
The Telegraph reported that Amazon’s expansion in Saudi Arabia may be lost in the desert. Allegedly there is a “feud” between Mr. Bezos and Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Details are few, but when money is at stake, minor differences can be smoothed by Bezos bulldozers properly equipped. The dust up between Mr. Bezos and Mr. Pecker may have some part to play in this alleged issue related to data centers in the Kingdom. Note: You may have to pay to view the “real” news story.
How Big Is AWS?
Amazon expansion into Saudi Arabia in doubt after feud between Jeff Bezos and Crown Prince
Data about the size of Amazon’s cloud business can be fuzzy. Business Insider, however, has the inside skivvy. AWS is bigger than its next four competitors combined. The number seems to be about $26 billion give or take a few billion. Quartz expresses the size in this way:
Amazon Web Services Brought in More Money Than McDonald’s in 2018.
The source does not covert the revenue to Big Macs, a favorite yardstick of some financial wonks.
Slam Dunk: Team Microsoft’s Defense Fizzles
We noted that Steve Ballmer and his Los Angeles Clippers basketball team pulled off a slam dunk. The Clippers smashed home a deal with Amazon for cloud services with Amazon. News of the deal surfaced on February 15, 2019. Ballmer’s Second Spectrum will use AWS to collect and analyze data. Perhaps Azure’s analytics will allow Team Microsoft to determine what went wrong. More details appear in GeekWire. But keep in mind that Microsoft’s Dynamics Suite is available in the Amazon Web Services Marketplace, according to Customer Think. Mr. Ballmer can dribble over and shoot around with a familiar suite of tools.
Eero: Scary?
Amazon’s acquisition of mesh WiFi devices continues to ripple across the home marketplace.
ZDNet stated:
The initial response to this has been mixed, some industry commentators have even called this acquisition “scary”, fearing that the Seattle-based internet retailer and public cloud provider will use Eero’s devices as a way of hoovering more and more information from its customers, with the intention of selling them more of its products.
The threat is that Amazon will leverage its other assets like its advanced machine learning capabilities and create a unified threat management solution at a very competitive price.
UTM from Amazon might blunt some competitors’ sales success and give AWS another advantage in its policeware capabilities.
Scary? Not for everyone. Just some.
About Those Leaky AWS Buckets
The world’s leading online bookstore has released some tips for AWS customers who want to secure their data. Navigate to “Serving Private Content with Signed URLs and Signed Cookies.” The trick is to use CloudFront urls, not Amazon urls. Hmmm.
Amazon Changing Colors?
The Bezos Bugle (aka the Washington Post) reported that Greenpeace thinks Amazon is “wavering on its commitment to renewable energy.” Here’s the nugget:
The [Greenpeace] report also contends that technology companies, particularly Amazon Web Services, which has rapidly expanded its Northern Virginia presence. need to do more to promote renewable energy sources. Amazon committed to moving to 100 percent renewable energy to run its data centers, but the report contends the company appears to be wavering from its pledge.
Amazon ECR and ECS Gain PrivateLink Support
Not familiar with Amazon acronym mania? ECR is the Electronic Container Registry. ECS is Elastic Customer Service. The PrivateLink is a networking technology “aimed to facilitate access to AWS services in a highly scalable and available way.” The poetic phrase comes from an news report in Infoq. These are administrative tools which, in theory, make AWS much more developer friendly. The source article includes a diagram of the bits and pieces one needs to make use of these Amazon offerings.
More Bare Metal Instances
Amazon introduced five new Amazon EC2 bare metal instances. Storage Review summaries the instances in a helpful table. Each delivers 14 gigabits per second.
New AWS Partner
Amazon does not make it easy to locate its Advanced Technology Partners. Wandisco announced that it is now an ATP partner in the APN or Amazon Web Services Partner Network of APN. Wandisco said:
The Advanced Technology Partner designation is the highest tier for Technology Partners that provide software and internet solutions in the AWS Partner Network. WANdisco achieved its status through a rigorous qualification process, based on referenceable customers on the AWS Platform and strict technical guidelines.
What’s Wandisco offer? The company “can enable organizations to seamlessly move large volumes of data with consistent and continuous availability.” More information is at this Yahoo link. Note that Yahoo links can go dead without warning.
Striim Builds for RedShift
Another Amazon partner is Striim. The company announced that it offerings streaming data pipelines to Amazon Redshift. The idea is that the service can help AWS customers migrate and move enterprise data in real time from a broad range of data sources to Amazon Redshift. The service can speed the adoption of a hybrid cloud architecture running on AWS. More information is available from Yahoo Finance. Note that Yahoo links can go dead without warning.
Become an Amazon AWS Expert
Geek.com reports that you can become a certified Amazon Web services architect for $35.
Ethical Hacking on AWS
The service introduction is not for everyone, but it is an important addition. According to Softpedia News:
If you want to run BackBox Linux in the cloud, on your AWS account, you should know that the ethical hacking operating system is now available on the Amazon Web Services cloud platform as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) virtual appliance that you can install with a few mouse clicks.
This is another useful component in Amazon’s policeware offerings. How robust are these policeware capabilities? Quite robust in the view of DarkCyber.
Amazon Invests in Rivian
Rivian is an electric vehicle start up. Jalopnik reported that Amazon pumped some amount (maybe $700 million) into the company. Jalopnik said:
And it’s hard to say what Amazon would want with electric cars, if you think of Amazon solely as a supply chain and retail enterprise that exists to crush the spirits and bathroom breaks of its workers.
Amazon supports TuSimple, a self driving truck company. The relationship began in 2018.
Google and Amazon: War of Words Escalating?
We noted that former Oracle executive Thomas Kurian sees Amazon AWS as a threat to the online advertising company. The fix may be hiring more Oracle style sales professionals. Fortune does not explain that “Oracle style” sales can be quite interesting, particularly if one is a customer with insecurities. Fortune included this statement in their report about Mr. Kurian’s plans:
An audience member commented to Kurian that for two years, Google has said it is concentrating on building a formidable sales-and-support staff, but that people “haven’t seen signs of change in the market structure.” Kurian responded by saying that Google has increased its spending on sales and support staff by a factor of four over the last three years, although he didn’t cite a specific number. He said that growing a sales force so quickly would be a challenge for any company, but that when he talks to customers, “they feel we have gone a long way.”
The subtext, in DarkCyber’s opinion, is that AWS is a bit of a problem for the online advertising giant. Mr. Kurian wants to respond to customers, an approach which Google has largely found unnecessary for about a quarter century.
Austin: More Amazon and More Traffic
Ah, Austin. The city has street people, traffic congestion, and soon more Amazonians. According to local TV news outlet KVUE:
Amazon said the 25,000 jobs they expected to create in New York will now go to tech hubs and corporate offices across the country, including in Austin.
Note: Local news outlets often take down their stories.
AWS Outposts Coming Later in 2019
SDX Central Confirms AWS Outposts
SDX Center reports that Amazon’s on premises hardware, known as AWS Outposts, will be available later in 2019. The idea is a single on ramp for cloud services. Cisco may team up with Amazon for certain peripherals.
Mildly Humorous Items
- American Media may pay Amazon to host its online services and data. Source: Geekwire
- IBM software now runs on Amazon’s cloud. Source: Geekwire
- Choice Hotels uses both Google and Amazon. Source: Yahoo Finance
Stephen E Arnold, February 18, 2019
Factualities for February 13, 2019
February 13, 2019
Data, data everywhere. The joy of two much data and analysis paralysis thrills anyone who revels in “real” facts. Professors of statistics, however, may not be amused.
$80 billion. The cost of poor customer service in 2018. Source: IBM
$2 billion. The amount IBM is “betting” to improve the hardware used for artificial intelligence by 1,000 times. What happened to quantum computing? DarkCyber does not know. Source: HPC Wire
164. The number of times faster IBM cloud functions can perform 100,000 forecasts. Source: IBM
$79. The amount each iPhone user spent on apps in 2018. Source: TechCrunch
$70 million. The cost of romance fraud to victims looking for love. Source: Sky News
10 percent. Percentage of a sample of “respondents” who said they have dated a person to gain access to that individual’s Netflix account. Source: Boy Genius Report
32 percent. Percentage of Canadian seafood samples mislabeled; that is, fish marked as sea bass could have been catfish. Source: University of Guelph
Six. The number of cancer types a single drug successfully treats. Source: London Economic
16,000. Number of flaws in the software for Google Chrome discovered by the science club inspired tool called Clusterfuzz. Source: Google
84 percent. The percentage of people in the UK between the ages of 18 and 24 use the Internet as their primary source of news. Source: Dark Web News
288,000,000. The square footage Amazon’s warehouses, offices, retail spaces, and data centers occupy. Source: The Atlantic
$85,000,000. The amount Google earns per day in profit. Source: IT Pro Portal
33 percent. The percentage of “news” produced by Bloomberg’s automated editorial system. Source: The envious New York Times
Stephen E Arnold, February 13, 2019
Amazonia for February 11, 2019
February 11, 2019
Amazon has been bulldozing away and pushing some jungle undergrowth into the parking lot of major media outlets. Let’s take a quick look at what’s shaking at the electronic bookstore on steroids:
In a New York We May Be Gone
I learned in “Facing Opposition, Amazon Reconsiders NY Headquarters Site, Two Officials Say.” The source? The Washington Post or what some of the DarkCyber researchers call the “Bezos Bugle.” The push back has ranged from allegations of subsidizing a successful company to suggestions that taxpayer money could directly benefit shareholders of Amazon. I learned:
In the past two weeks, the state Senate nominated an outspoken Amazon critic to a state board where he could potentially veto the deal, and City Council members for the second time aggressively challenged company executives at a hearing where activists booed and unfurled anti-Amazon banners. K ey officials, including freshman U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), whose district borders the proposed Amazon site, have railed against the project.
Worth monitoring because if the JEDI deal goes to Microsoft, would Amazon bail out of Virginia?
Indiscreet Pictures and Allegations of Blackmail
Amazon once was a relatively low profile outfit. Then the rocket ships, the Bezos divorce, the JEDI dust up, and now a spat. One headline captures the publicity moment: “Jeff Bezos Says Enquirer Threatened to Publish Revealing Pics.” I don’t want to unzip this allegation. You can expose yourself to the “facts” by running queries on objective search systems like Bing, Google, and Yandex. Alternatively one can turn to the Daily Mail and its full frontal report on this allegedly accurate news story.
Movie Madness
I don’t know anything about the Hollywood movie game. I noted “Woody Allen Sues Amazon for $68 Million for Refusing to Release His Films.” In the context of allegations of blackmail, this adds another facet to the diamond reputation of the humble online bookstore. According to the write up:
Allen blames the studio’s unwillingness to release his films on “a 25-year old, baseless allegation against Mr. Allen” — specifically, Allen’s adopted stepdaughter, Dylan Farrow, telling the world that he sexually assaulted her when she was a child. The suit claims that Farrow’s comments shouldn’t affect the Amazon deal, since the “allegation was already well known to Amazon (and the public) before Amazon entered into four separate deals with Mr. Allen—and, in any event it does not provide a basis for Amazon to terminate the contract.”
Amazon is taking a moral stand it seems. Interesting in the context of the blackmail allegations. Another PR coup?
Accounting Methods or Fraud?
The Los Angeles Times reported that some Amazon delivery drivers’ tips were not paid to the drivers as an add on to their pay. The tips were calculated as part of their regular wage. “Where Does a tip to an Amazon Driver Go? In Some Cases, Toward the Driver’s Base Pay” reported:
Amazon guarantees third-party drivers for its Flex program a minimum of $18 to $25 per hour, but the entirety of that payment doesn’t always come from the company. If Amazon’s contribution doesn’t reach the guaranteed wage, the e-commerce giant makes up the difference with tips from customers, according to documentation shared by five drivers.
Is this an accounting method related in some way to Enron’s special purpose entities? But in the context of blackmail and a legal battle with Woody Allen, I am not sure how to interpret the LA Times’ report if it is accurate.
Amazon and Facial Recognition
Amazon has thrown some support behind the idea that facial recognition systems may require a bit of regulation. I learned about this interest in “Amazon Weighs In on Potential Legislative Framework for Facial Recognition.” The idea is that responsible use of facial recognition technology may be a good idea. The write up stated:
…Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published a study that found Rekognition, Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) object detection API, failed to reliably determine the sex of female and darker-skinned faces in specific scenarios.
Image recognition systems do vary in accuracy. The fancy lingo is outside the scope of this week’s write up. Examples of errors are interesting, particularly when systems confuse humans with animals or identify a person as a malefactor when that individual is an individual of sterling character. Eighty percent accuracy is a pretty good score in my experience. Stated another way, a system making 20 mistakes per 100 outputs is often close enough for horseshoes. A misidentified individual may have another point of view.
Alexa Gets a New Skill
The Digital Reader reported that you can now have Alexa play a choose your own adventure audiobook. Amazon wants to make sure it has a grip on the emerging trend of “interactive fiction.” Perfect for the mobile phone, zip zip zip reader.
Baby Activity API
The engineers at Amazon have chopped another trail through the digital jungle. Programmable Web reported that Amazon’s new baby activity skill API let parents track infant data hands free. Parents should be able to track their baby’s data. Are third parties tracking the infant as well? The write up states:
The new API includes several pre-built interfaces for tracking specific data points, including Weight, Sleep, DiaperChange, and InfantFeeding. Amazon plans to continue adding to these interfaces in hopes of streamlining integration.
If a third party were to have access to these data, combining the baby data with other timeline data might yield some useful items of information at some point in the future. Behavioral cues, purchases, social interactions, and videos watched could provide useful insights to an analyst.
More Live Streaming and a Possible Checkmate for QVC
“Amazon Live Is the Retailer’s Latest Effort to Take on QVC with Live Streamed Video” states:
Amazon is taking on QVC with the launch of Amazon Live, which features live-streamed video shows from Amazon talent as well as those from brands that broadcast their own live streams through a new app, Amazon Live Creator.
Will the Twitch model work for remarkable products like super exclusive Tanzanite? QVC may try to compete. DarkCyber believes that effort would tax the shopping channel in several ways. Some cloud pros might suggest putting QVC offering on a cloud service. Will AWS make the short list?
Amazon Space
Atlantic reported that the electronic bookstore “has 288M sq. ft. of warehouses, offices, retail stores, and data centers.”
Quite an Amazon-scale week.
Stephen E Arnold, February 11, 2019
Amazonia for February 4, 2019
February 4, 2019
The Bezos retail bulldozer could be slowing. Nevertheless, the AWS jungle continues to flourish with hefty growth. Eweek remains a cheerlead stating confidently that “Amazon’s AWS cloud business will continue to grow.” Other jungle news includes:
Yahoo Reports about Amazon Disappointing Outlook
Yahoo. I thought that was Oath. The purple financial service reported that Amazon’s outlook [is] disappointing. The story asserted:
AWS’s revenue continued to grow at a breakneck pace. Its revenue growth isn’t accelerating anymore, as it was for several quarters through to Q2 2018, but it’s also not decelerating, as it did last quarter. In constant currency, the cloud computing service’s revenue has increased year over year as follows: 46% in Q4 2018, 46% in Q3 2018, 49% in Q2 2018, 48% in Q1 2018, 44% in Q4 2017, and 42% in Q3 2017.
Rekognition Denied Respekt
Gizmodo reports that it knows of only one law enforcement client for Amazon’s Rekognition facial recognition policeware. The issue is the accuracy of FAR as these systems have been described by some observers. According to “Defense of Amazon’s Face Recognition Tool Undermined by Its Only Known Police Client”:
the only law enforcement agency Amazon has acknowledged as a client says it also does not use Rekognition in the way Amazon claims it recommends, Gizmodo has learned. In doing so, the law enforcement agency undermines the very argument Amazon uses to discredit critical research about Rekognition.
How accurate are FAR systems? The Gizmodo article reports:
…researchers from the MIT Media Lab published a study indicating that Rekognition’s facial analysis function showed it struggled to correctly identify women of color. Once again, Amazon suggested the results stemmed not from bias in the software itself, but from incorrect threshold settings….
Amazon is likely to face more scrutiny for its FAR than other, lower profile firms. This is likely to be a contentious issue for Amazon as it ramps up its sales efforts to the LE and intel community. Competitors may find it an attractive issue to discuss in their sales presentations.
Amazon and Banking
Bank Innovation reports that Amazon may move Alexa into voice and cloud based banking. You can read the analysis at this link. The story points out that
E-commerce giant Amazon mentioned its cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services, or AWS, 58 times, its virtual assistant Alexa 25 times, and retail just once in its earnings release for the fourth quarter of 2018.
Is there a connection among Amazon’s law enforcement services and the financial sector? The write up does not explore that angle.
MongoDB: An Analyst’s View
“Amazon’s Move Against MongoDB Does Not Worry Me” explains:
Amazon is effectively pitching customers on using AWS to get the best of MongoDB when there’s already a more functional version of the database available on not only AWS but also on Google Cloud and Microsoft‘s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Azure. It’s called Atlas, and last quarter this cloud version of MongoDB accounted for 22% of MongoDB’s revenue. Total cloud revenue from Atlas soared 300% year over year in the third quarter. The following chart shows what Amazon is after with DocumentDB — replacing or enhancing the majority of Mongo deployments hosted on-site or co-located in a data center.
No problem. Amazon is using an older version of MongoDB. No worries, says the expert.
Amazon and Facebook
First, Apple showed Facebook that it is not able to control its destiny. Killing the Facebook calendar and other in house functions was a bit of a wake up call for the move fast, break things outfit.
Now Facebook perceives Amazon as a threat as well. According to “Facebook Thinks Amazon’s Ad Business Has Officially Become a Threat,” Facebook is nervous. Facebook mentions Amazon in its annual report.
One interesting Amazon data point, if it is accurate, is:
Amazon’s share of the online digital ad market is expected to grow to 2.8% in 2019, up from 2.1% last year, according to eMarketer.
There may be some headroom for Amazon to expand.
Amazon Plays Rugby AI
Who knew Amazon was athletically able to imitate IBM’s marketing of AI in sports?
According to Investor Ideas, Amazon Web services has been chosen for the Guinness Six Nations Rugby Championship. If you are into the use of smart software and brutal sports, you can find more information at this link.
Stephen E Arnold, January 4, 2019
Analytic Hubs: Now You Know
January 30, 2019
Gartner Group has crafted a new niche. I learned about analytic hubs in Datanami. The idea is that a DMSA or data management solution fro analytics is now a thing. Odd. I thought that companies have been providing data analytics hubs for a number of years. Oh, well, whatever sells.
The DMSA vendor list in “What Gartner Sees in Analytic Hubs” is interesting. Plus the write up includes one of the objective, math based, deeply considered Boston Consulting Group quadrants which make some ideas so darned fascinating. I mean Google. An analytics hub?
Based on information in the write up, here are the vendors who are the movers and shakers in analytic hubs:
Alibaba Cloud
Amazon Web Services
Arm
Cloudera
GBase
Hortonworks
Huawei
IBM
MapR Technologies
MarkLogic
Micro Focus
Microsoft
Neo4
Oracle
Pivotal
SAP
Snowflake
Teradata
This is an interesting list. It seems the “consultants” at Gartner, had lunch, and generated a list with names big and small, known and unknown.
I noted the presence of Amazon which is reasonable. I was surprised that the reference to Oracle did not include its stake in a vendor which actually delivers the “hubby” functions to which the write up alludes. The inclusion of MarkLogic was interesting because that company is a search system, an XML database, and annoyance to Oracle. IBM is fascinating, but which “analytic hub” technology is Gartner considering unknown to me. One has to admire the inclusion of Snowflake and MapR Technologies.
I suppose the analysis will fuel a conference, briefings, and consulting revenue.
Will the list clarify the notion of an analytics hub?
Yeah, that’s another issue. It’s Snowflake without the snow.
Stephen E Arnold, January 30, 2019
Amazonia for January 28, 2019
January 28, 2019
Amazon and Open Source
We learned from GeekWire that Amazon Web Services continues open-source push with code behind SageMaker Neo. The write up told us:
Amazon Web Services has decided to release the code behind one of its key machine-learning services as an open-source project, as it continues to push back against critics who find its relationship with open-source software out of balance.
Amazon wants to make friends with the open source world.
The write up pointed out:
The release is also another sign that AWS increasing involvement with the open-source community, after years of criticism over its tendency to use open-source projects as the foundation for revenue-generating services without contributing much back to the community. Neo-AI joins Firecracker, which was also unveiled at re:Invent 2018, as another fundamental technology advance that the cloud leader has decided to release as an open-source project.
Amazon has some interesting use cases for open source. Some of these reminded DarkCyber Annex of Microsoft’s efforts years ago but blended with a little of the IBM lock in methodology.
Amazon Backup: Good Bye Cohesity and Veeam?
Amazon has rolled out its official back up service. “AWS Backup, a fully-managed, centralized backup service that makes it faster and simpler for customers to back up their data across AWS services and on-premises, helping customers more easily meet their business and regulatory backup compliance requirements.” Source: About Amazon
Amazon Helps Lots of Small Businesses. Yep, Lots.
According to Neowin, Amazon has helped 50,000 small businesses. The dollar volume of the help was pegged at $500,000. Plus, an additional “200,000 SMBs managed to generate $100,000” in revenue.
Alexa Team Number 10,0000
What are 10,000 people doing with Alexa. We assume that the Alexa in the auto device is high on the list. Business Insider listed some other important projects in the Bezos jungle:
- Machine learning
- Making Alexa “more knowledgeable”
- Giving Alexa a personality.
Another area of activity is improving the question and answer capability of Alexa.
Amazon Facial Recognition Performance
The New York Times revealed that Amazon’s facial recognition may have some accuracy challenges. For example, Amazon’s Rekognition mistakes women as men 19% of the time, and darker-skinned women as men 31% of the time, more than similar services from IBM and Microsoft.
Amazon and Zigbee. Zigbee?
Amazon is ubiquitous. At least that is what Quartz has concluded. Good catch. Zigbee, which does not occupy too much of my time, is now joined the Board of Directors of the Zigbee Alliance, reports The Verge. The write up states:
Amazon now has a say in the development of a commonly used smart home standard, giving the company more power as it continues to push smart speakers, cameras, doorbells, and all other kinds of gadgets into its customers’ homes.
Another path cut through the jungle by the Bezos bulldozer is being blazed.
Amazon Drivers Unhappy?
We spotted a news item from the CBS affiliate in Dallas, Texas. The write up states:
More than a dozen of Amazon packages were found on the side of the road in Arlington Sunday, addressed to homes not far from where they were left.
A single unhappy driver, perhaps. A signal that pesky humans can foil the well oiled Amazon machine? Amazon delivery robots may be the answer. But humans are still needed for Amazon’s house cleaning service which is becoming more widely available in the US. Humans are still required for this, however.
Stephen E Arnold, January 28, 2019
Fragmented Data: Still a Problem?
January 28, 2019
Digital transitions are a major shift for organizations. The shift includes new technology and better ways to serve clients, but it also includes massive amounts of data. All organizations with a successful digital implementation rely on data. Too much data, however, can hinder organizations’ performance. The IT Pro Portal explains how data and something called mass data fragmentation is a major issue in the article, “What Is Mass Data Fragmentation, And What Are IT Leaders So Worried About It?”
The biggest question is: what exactly is mass data fragmentation? I learned:
“We believe one of the major culprits is a phenomenon called mass data fragmentation. This is essentially just a technical way of saying, ’data that is siloed, scattered and copied all over the place’ leading to an incomplete view of the data and an inability to extract real value from it. Most of the data in question is what’s called secondary data: data sets used for backups, archives, object stores, file shares, test and development, and analytics. Secondary data makes up the vast majority of an organization’s data (approximately 80 per cent).”
The article compares the secondary data to an iceberg, most of it is hidden beneath the surface. The poor visibility leads to compliance and vulnerability risks. In other words, security issues that put the entire organization at risk. Most organizations, however, view their secondary data as a storage bill, compliance risk (at least that is good), and a giant headache.
When surveyed about the amount of secondary data they have, it was discovered that organizations had multiple copies of the same data spread over the cloud and on premise locations. IT teams are expected to manage the secondary data across all the locations, but without the right tools and technology the task is unending, unmanageable, and the root of more problems.
If organizations managed their mass data fragmentation efficiently it would increase their bottom line, reduce costs, and reduce security risks. With more access points to sensitive data and they are not secure, it increases the risk of hacking and information being stolen.
Whitney Grace, January 28, 2019
China Is the Winner: Bing Go
January 24, 2019
I read “China Appears to Block Microsoft’s Bing as Censorship Intensifies.” The write up explains that Bing has gone. Perhaps the Avis search system will return, but I think that some work may be required.
What’s interesting is that I understood Microsoft to be filtering certain results from the index used by those users firing queries from the Middle Kingdom.
The write up explains:
If the block proves to be permanent, it would suggest that Western companies can do little to persuade China to give them access to what has become the world’s largest Internet market by users, especially at a time of increased trade and economic tensions with the United States.
There may be some interesting implications; for example:
- Chinese nationals who are working for Microsoft may find themselves subject scrutiny. That could bring bad tidings to the individuals and possibly their families.
- The Redmond giant has big plans for its cloud services. In China, the weather forecast could turn grim. I suppose one can think of the possible prohibitions against Microsoft technology as a form of raining on a parade.
- Google’s floundering in China and the more recent dust up about as special China style search system may suggest that the online ad giant is not on the same wave length as the government of China.
To sum up, this is significant if less interesting than having one’s mobile phone alert a user when a person of “low social credit score” is near.
Stephen E Arnold, January 24, 2019
Amazonia for January 21, 2019
January 21, 2019
The online bookstore has been busy. Developments we noted at DarkCyber included:
Amazon Wants to Make Coding Easier
GeekWire reported that Amazon has a secret “low code / no code project. The idea is “anyone to create business applications around their custom needs.” Disintermediation may be one consequence if this initiative takes root and bears fruit. The catchphrase for the project may be “AWS for everyone.” Source: GeekWire
Build AWS Using AWS
With Amazon becoming a development platform, one can use the Amazon command line environment. A user can also use Microsoft Visual Studio. You may need the AWS command line interface and Python. What are the implications for developers? Amazon is in your future. Source: Virtualization Review
How to Build a Serverless Solution
A how to which makes what might be a complex process less complicated. The article includes nods to developers who use Microsoft tools. There are code snippets too. The Amazon system screenshots are legible and labeled. The message is, “Use Amazon.” Source: Medium
Rackspace Embraces AWS
Rackspace, a vendor of cloud services, rolled out a suite of Amazon friendly services. The company suggested its services is designed to help companies leverage adoption of Amazon Aurora, Amazon Redshift, AWS Glue and Amazon Athena. Why embrace a competitor. The company’s rationale is “the database service gives customers the ability to prep, load and query data sets while reducing operational costs and time to market.” Source: ZDNet
Amazon Is Your Backup
The company rolled out a centralized backup service. The idea is that if you deal direct with Amazon, backups can be automated. The services meshes nicely with some other Amazon services. Our source said: [The new services helps] “customers more easily meet their business and regulatory backup compliance requirements. AWS Backup makes protecting storage volumes, databases, and file systems easier by giving customers a single service to configure and audit the AWS resources they backup, automate backup scheduling, set retention policies, and monitor recent backups and restores in one place.” Cloud and on premises data can be handled with the backup service. Source: AsianAge
Where Does One Run and AWS Workload?
Amazon now has an answer. The online bookstore purchase TSO Logic. The company’s software was developed to “find the optimized spot to place each and every workload.” No more trial and error for AWS developers. Amazon also purchased CloudEndure, a firm with disaster recovery tools. The deals suggest that Amazon wants to accelerate rounding out its offerings to developers. Source: SDX Central
Trade Publication Identifies MongoDB As a Target
Amazon’s document oriented database is an example of Amazon’s Bezos biceps flexing. According to CRN:
Amazon is simply trying to offer a more feature-rich document database.
The write up pointed out:
The MongoDB stock plunge after publication of an AWS blog revealing the new service… illustrates the tremendous muscle AWS has in the market and impact development of its services can have on independent software vendors.
TechCrunch describes the new database service and its license in a less decorous way. The phrase “middle finger” suggests the nature of the Amazon tactic.
Sources: Computer Reseller News and Techcrunch
Amazon’s Government Push Gains Momentum
DCD reported that “AWS will host the UK government’s Crown Marketplace.” Will the GSAAdvantage service be a target for Amazon’s sales team. The write up points out that when entities embrace large providers:
This approach has cost some small companies dearly. In 2017, Salford-based cloud provider DataCentred shut down after its largest customer, the tax collection agency Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, moved to AWS.
Source: Data Center Dynamics
Amazon Opens Its AI Conference to a Wider Audience
For conference organizers who dismissed Amazon as a worthy subject, a wake up call has been sounded. CNBC reported that “Amazon is launching a public version of its invite-only robotics and AI conference.” DarkCyber assumes that the conference will address Amazon’s policeware initiative. What’s Amazon’s policeware? Source: CNBC
Stephen E Arnold, January 21, 2018
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
